This time last year my wife and I were attending Ecclesia’s Genesis Church Planters Training in Chicago, Illinois, attempting to soak up every ounce of information presented to us. We were discerning a growing sense of call to plant a church in a community full of people and experiences very different from our own.
Today, one year later, marks our third month on the ground in Albuquerque’s International District, a beautifully diverse, tragically marginalized and wonderfully resilient area of our city. We desire to see a missional community of faith spring up, which we are calling New Creation Albuquerque. We hope to be a people seeking the peace and flourishing of our neighborhood. 25% of our neighbors were born outside of the U.S. and nearly 50% live below the poverty line. It is where people begin when they have nothing or end up when they’ve lost everything.
As we begin our church planting journey, we are sometimes bold, often uncertain and growing ever more dependent on the Holy Spirit for moment by moment discernment. God is on the move and is affirming His call on our lives! He is building the beginnings of beautiful relationships between our families and our neighbors, men, women and children born in America, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, Africa and Mexico. We have attended a Buddhist festival at the invitation of a monk I met while prayer walking. We have prayed for broken marriages, empty bank accounts and hurting legs and backs. We are seeing God move. And, others are joining us! Three families have moved into the neighborhood to be an intentional presence with us. We have had over 35 adults attend the first 3 of a series of 10 weekly interest meetings. These represent a diverse and gifted group of Jesus’ followers discerning God’s call to join us on mission to the International District. God is moving. We are encouraged and are expectant for what the Holy Spirit is bringing about as we strive to bear faithful witness to Jesus’ Kingdom in this place.
The Ecclesia board is excited to announce the addition of a new church in San Diego California to our family. The Commons Church was planted by Jon and Sarah Nichols 4 years ago to be an incarnational presence in San Diego. The goal of The Commons is be a community conspiring to proclaim the cross, working to cultivate disciples, embracing the oppressed, and inviting others to join the movement. To get an introduction to The Commons from Jon, check out this video here – 
On joining Ecclesia Jon had this to say, “It was important to me that our church be connected to something greater than ourselves. This desire is rooted in both the longing to be in community with others and our desire to be in submission to others. Therefore, when I found Ecclesia and I began reading and talking to the people from Ecclesia it felt like we were home. Theologically and missiologically, Ecclesia has been what we were looking for. This conviction has been proved over and over again through the last two years by the encouragement and support we have received from Ecclesia.”
I am a straight-A student. Even though I haven’t been in school for a decade now, that identity remains. I am one who succeeds, who passes the test, who figures out how to solve the puzzle. Its one of the things that drew me to church planting. But the truth about straight-A students is that they are driven just as much by fear of failure than by joy in success. As much as I relished the idea of starting a successful new church, fear of failure was holding me back.In 2009, I attended the Ecclesia Church Planters Training. And one of the lessons that I have kept with me since is that it is okay to fail in church planting. In fact, you can fail in church planting and still be a tremendous success. In the first session of our week, Bob Hyatt led a section on ‘Why Plant Churches?’ and he said: